Isaac Herzog
Isaac "Bougie" Herzog (Hebrew: יצחק "בוז׳י" הרצוג, romanized: Yitskhak "Buzhi" Hertsog; born 22 September 1960) is an Israeli politician who has been serving since 2021 as the 11th president of Israel. He is the first president to be born in Israel after its Declaration of Independence.
This article is about the President of Israel. For his grandfather, the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland and later of Israel, see Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog.
Isaac Herzog
22 September 1960
Tel Aviv, Israel
Zionist Union (2015–2018)
3
- Chaim Herzog (father)
- Aura Ambache (mother)
1978
Rav séren (Major)
His Excellency, The Honorable
כבוד הנשיא
Your Excellency, Honorable President
כבוד הנשיא
Mr. President
אדוני הנשיא
Son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, he is a lawyer by profession and had served as Government Secretary from 1999 to 2001. He was a member of the Knesset from 2003 to 2018. He has held several ministerial posts between 2005 and 2011, including serving as Minister of Welfare and Social Services from 2007 to 2011 under prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Herzog had served as Chairman of the Labor Party and the Zionist Union alliance from 2013 to 2017. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 2013 to 2018 and was the Labor Party candidate for prime minister during the 2015 Israeli legislative election. Herzog was elected in the 2021 Israeli presidential election and was inaugurated on 7 July 2021. He is the first son of an Israeli president to become president himself.
Early life and education
Isaac (Yitzhak) "Bougie" Herzog was born in Tel Aviv. He is the son of Major-General Chaim Herzog, who served two terms as the Sixth President of Israel from 1983 to 1993, and Aura Ambache, founder of the Council for a Beautiful Israel.[1][2] Herzog's father was born and raised in Ireland and his mother was born in Egypt; their families were of Eastern European Jewish descent (from Poland, Russia, and Lithuania). He has two brothers and a sister.[2] His paternal grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland,[2] a post he held from 1922 to 1935,[1] and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1936 to 1959. The third foreign minister of Israel, Abba Eban, was his uncle.[3]
When his father served as permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations for three years, Herzog lived in New York City and attended the Ramaz School.[4] In the following years, while also studying in high school, Herzog gained an advanced academic education at Cornell University and New York University and spent summers at Camp Ramah.[5][6] He also accompanied his father to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Brooklyn.[7]
When he returned to Israel at the end of 1978, he enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and served as a major officer in Unit 8200 of the Israeli Intelligence Corps. Herzog studied law at Tel Aviv University. He worked at a law firm founded by his father, Herzog, Fox & Ne'eman.[8]